Producer: Adrian Sherwood
Bass: Sean Oliver
Drums: Bruce Smith
(Rough Trade RTT 128)Somewhere in storage I still have a mixing desk copy of an incendiary gig by James 'Blood' Ulmer at The Notre Dame Hall in London from about 81/82 (?) Seem to recall that it had been mooted as a possible live album on Rough Trade

Thursday, 29 January 2015

...To enter the drug treatment system, such as it is, requires a leap of faith. The system operates largely unmoved by the findings of medical science. Peer-reviewed data and evidence-based practices do not govern how rehabilitation facilities work. There are very few reassuring medical degrees adorning their walls. Opiates, cocaine and alcohol each affect the brain in different ways, yet drug treatment facilities generally do not distinguish between the addictions. In their one-size-fits-all approach, heroin addicts are treated like any other addicts. And with roughly 90 percent of facilities grounded in the principle of abstinence, that means heroin addicts are systematically denied access to Suboxone and other synthetic opioids.
On average, private residential treatment costs roughly $31,500 for 30 days. Addicts experience a hodgepodge of drill-instructor tough love, and self-help lectures, and dull nights in front of a television. Rules intended to instill discipline govern all aspects of their lives, down to when they can see their loved ones and how their bed must be made every morning. A program can seem both excessively rigid and wildly disorganized.

The video to accompany the latest album from Africa Express - the first African version of Riley’s minimalist classic - recorded in Bamako, Mali in October 2013.
Director Roland Hamilton takes us on a journey through the streets of the Malian capital and into the makeshift studio at local youth club Maison Des Jeunes, offering glimpses of the creative process behind ‘Africa Express Presents… Terry Riley’s In C Mali’ with local and Western musicians plus musical director André de Ridder.

“I am overwhelmed and delighted by this CD. I was not quite prepared for such an incredible journey, hearing the soul of Africa in joyous flight over those 53 patterns of ‘In C’. This ensemble feeds the piece with ancient threads of musical wisdom and humanity indicating to me that this work is a vessel ready to receive and be shaped by the spontaneous feelings and colours of the magician/musician. I could not ask for a greater gift for this daughter’s 50th birthday.”

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

One of the greatest songs by one of the greatest singers. If anyone out there did download any of the music that was originally given away free at Leven's 'Haunted Valley' site could they get in touch. Thanks

The two thousand tenants formed a virtually homogeneous collection of well-to-do professional people -- lawyers, doctors, tax consultants, senior academics and advertising executives, along with a smaller group of airline pilots, film-industry technicians and trios of air-hostesses sharing apartments...
A new social type was being created by the apartment building, a cool, unemotional personality impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life, with minimal needs for privacy, who thrived like an advanced species of machine in the neutral atmosphere. This was the sort of resident who was content to do nothing but sit in his over-priced apartment, watch television with the sound turned down, and wait for his neighbours to make a mistake...
In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape. Royal would have given anything for one vulgar mantelpiece ornament, one less than snow-white lavatory bowl, one hint of hope. Thank God that they were at last breaking out of this fur-lined prison...

Drone video shows the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as it is today - 70 years after it was liberated by Soviet troops. The camp in Poland is now maintained as a World Heritage Site and is visited by thousands of tourists and survivors every year. Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans during World War II. More than a million people - the vast majority of them Jews - died there between 1940, when it was built, and 1945, when it was liberated by the Soviet army

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated.
Bitter Lake is a new, adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer.
The narrative goes all over the world, America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia - but the country at the heart of it is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted our politicians with the terrible truth - that they cannot understand what is going on any longer.
The film reveals the forces that over the past thirty years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this.
But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan - and used them in new and radical ways.
He has tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan. A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.

Ed Piskor author of hip hop family tree comicHas used all of are likenesses and are stories with no permission from the parties involved . Not even a thank you or a copy of the book. And he didnt even get the story right. I commented on this fact asking him to do the right thing on his page and he ran and hid like a guilty little white rabbit . With out us old Gees he would have no book. Shameful thievery ! Hey Ed we would be very happy for you if you did the right thing

Sunday, 25 January 2015

You can listen to the last twenty minutes of today's Swans gig HERE(Between 01:40:51 and 02:04:20)There's also an interview with Michael Gira at this link (between 01:44:50 and 01:56:37)
Swans @Sugar Mountain(Click arrow to download)